Career and Technical Education: An Alternative Approach to Educating At-Risk Youth

1. Career and Technical Education: An Alternative Approach to Educating At-Risk Youth Seminar in Applied Theory and Research II By Nicole Morris Midterm Presentation Spring 2010 – 3.25.10

2. Table of Contents • Research Design • Threats to Internal Validity • Threats to External validity • Pretest and Posttest • Proposed Data of Pretest and Posttest • Correlation • Proposed Data Analysis • References

3. Research Design • Pre-Experimental Design: One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design. • Single Group: Single group is pre-tested (O), exposed to a treatment (X), and posttested (O). • Symbolic Design: OXO

4. Threats to Internal Validity • History: Poor weather conditions, fire drill, student misbehavior, and classroom distractions e.g., iPods and cell phones. • Maturation: Lack of engagement due to age and repetition of ninth grade. • Testing: Pre-test sensitization, and familiarity with questioning, could improve scores. • Instrumentation: Researcher created teacher and student surveys, and used Prentice Hall NYS Regents Review exams presented by classroom teacher. • Selection: Non-random student group. • Mortality: Possibility of drop outs, change of address and transfers. • Selection-Maturation Interaction: Students vary in age and gender.

5. Threats to External Validity • Generalizable Conditions: Small class size and same instructor for multiple subjects allows students to adjust to instructors teaching style. • Pre-Test Treatment: The exposure to pre-test questions are likely to have an impact on the quiz and post-test scores. • Selection-Treatment Interaction: The teacher and student participants as well as the subject area were chosen, rather than selected randomly. • Experimenter Effects: The actions of the researcher through observation, whether conscious or unconscious, may affect the performance and responses of the participants. • Reactive Arrangements/ Participants Effects: Students may behave or react once aware they are involved in a action research study.

6. One single group of students will be given four exams to test content mastery of Integrated Algebra using Prentice Hall Brief Review for New York State Regents Exams. Pretest: 2 Pretest exams will be administered to student group with and without prior CTE instruction. Posttest: 2 Posttest exams will be administered to student group with and without prior CTE instruction. Pretest and Posttest * CTE – Career and Technical Education

7. Proposed Data of Pretest and Posttest

8. Survey Responses Survey Question 8: I enjoy math more when integrated with carpentry projects. Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree (4) (3) (2) (1)

9. Correlation Correlation of student engagement to mathematics because of CTE and content mastery of Integrated Algebra. Survey Question 8: I enjoy math more when integrated with carpentry projects. • The data shows a strong, positive correlation of 0.89

10. Proposed Data Analysis • The bar graph, displaying pretest and posttest math score averages, demonstrates that the single group analysis of a ninth grade class is more engaged and thus masters math content , when CTE is integrated into the algebra lesson. • The scatter plot shows that the association between CTE and engagement of Algebra, which results in content mastery, has a strong-positive correlation. The correlation coefficient is 0.887. • Hence, it can be proposed that, students who enjoyed math when taught with carpentry projects (*CTEC) were more engaged and thus performed better and mastered the content taught in an algebra lesson. * CTEC – Career and Technical Education Component

11. References O’Connor – Petruso, S.,(2008) Stat.scales.analyses.threats.design.ppt.